This Birding Life (28 page)

Dawn broke fitfully through the pine canopy, and with it, a most extraordinary sound: a rapidly accelerating series of echoing notes followed by what appeared to be a champagne cork being released. On the far horizon, two Capercaillie cocks were strutting their stuff.

We watched, entranced, for an hour or so, willing them to come closer as they spread their tail-feathers and performed their extraordinary mating dance. Unfortunately, they did not, and as the grey light of morning flooded the forest, they eventually disappeared. I have spent more comfortable nights birding, but rarely such a memorable one.

Jamaica is an excellent location for a winter birding trip – though you might not automatically associate the island with birds. One of my favourite bird families – the North American wood-warblers – has at least a dozen representatives wintering there, and almost every patch of trees contains at least one of these elegant, brightly coloured birds hawking for insects.

American Redstarts and Black-throated Blue Warblers were everywhere, while two other species – Cape May and Worm-eating Warblers – were new for me. The latter failed to live up to its name, foraging instead for insects high in the forest canopy. Another ‘American' bird, the American Kestrel, was also common – either being mobbed by the ubiquitous Loggerhead Kingbird, or in turn chasing off the larger Red-tailed Hawk.

But the real attraction for visiting birders is the 28 endemic species – birds found nowhere else in the world. Jamaica has the highest number of endemics for any island its size – even more than neighbouring Cuba, an island ten times bigger. This is because of Jamaica's origin as an oceanic island, which has never been connected to any other landmass.

Several of the endemics are among the commonest birds, so from the first morning we enjoyed views of two delightful hummingbirds: the Red-billed Streamertail and the Jamaican Mango – both as beautiful as their names suggest. We also watched the antics of a pair of Vervain Hummingbirds. At less than two-and-a-half inches long, and weighing just three grams, this is the second smallest bird in the world (the even tinier Bee Hummingbird lives on Cuba). They look more like large flying insects than birds, and they buzz around from flower to flower like bumblebees, sipping nectar as they go.

Other endemic birds were much harder to find, requiring long treks
into the famous coffee-growing area of the Blue Mountains; while we could bird at a more leisurely pace in the grounds of Hotel Mockingbird Hill, overlooking the resort of Port Antonio, on the north-east coast. Here, we saw both native species of cuckoo – the huge Chestnut-bellied and the smaller Jamaican Lizard-cuckoo. These are known as Old Man Bird and Old Woman Bird because their extraordinary calls sound like grumbling senior citizens!

Mockingbird Hill is also home to the island's newest endemic species, the Black-billed Streamertail. This elegant hummingbird has recently been given full specific status, as its song, habits and plumage all differ from those of its commoner relative, Red-billed Streamer-tail. Both are known locally as ‘doctor bird', because their long tails resemble the tail-coats once worn by medical men.

On our final afternoon, we visited Rocklands bird-feeding station, near Montego Bay airport. Here, Red-billed Streamertails and Jamaican Mangos took sugar solution from a feeder – but this time perching on our fingers to do so.

The ferry journey lasted a shade under two hours, but took us back many years in time, to the little island of Flatey. Situated in a fjord which makes a major dent into Iceland's west coast, Flatey is home to two Eider farmers, a handful of summer holidaymakers and some of the loveliest birds I've ever seen.

As we got off the ferry, Puffins and Black Guillemots were bobbing up and down by the quayside – the latter in their smart black-and-white dress. This delightful auk is known locally as ‘teista' – close enough to the Shetland word ‘tystie' to reveal the common linguistic heritage between the two places.

In Britain you have to venture to the very highest tops of the Cairngorms to encounter breeding Snow Buntings, but here on Flatey they have become a garden bird. Lena, the Eider farmer's wife, regularly throws out home-baked bread and cakes for the buntings, which appeared to appreciate them as much as a hungry BBC camera crew did.

Another culinary treat on Lena's well-stocked dining table was Eider eggs. Served warm, these tasted fresher than any I have ever eaten – probably because the nests from which they had been collected were only a few minutes away. Haffstein, Lena's husband, collects the Eider's soft down, too – which fetches a premium price from Japanese buyers keen to get the perfect night's sleep.

After elevenses, lunch and afternoon tea we were ready to do some work, so we went in search of Flatey's two star species. Both are members of the phalarope family – a word derived from the Greek meaning ‘coot foot', which refers to their partly webbed toes. For unlike other waders, phalaropes spend much of their time swimming, propelling themselves along like a child's clockwork toy.

Their other claim to fame is that the females are not only more colourful than the males, but take the initiative in courtship, too. Having laid their eggs, they leave the dowdier male to brood the clutch and look after the tiny chicks.

The commoner species of the two was the Red-necked Phalarope, with up to a dozen females congregating to bathe and squabble on the village pond each evening. With their steel-grey plumage and bright orange collars, they are a very handsome bird indeed.

But not quite as handsome as their cousin – the Grey Phalarope. If any bird has a really misleading name, then this one does. It's true that in autumn, when they occasionally appear in Britain on their way south, they are predominantly grey and white. But here on Flatey, at the very southern edge of their Arctic breeding range, they truly deserve their North American name of Red Phalarope.

Haffstein rowed us across to a tiny offshore island, in the company of Iceland's top ornithologist Dr Aevar Petersen. As the little boat
approached the shore, we caught sight of what looked like two orange rugby balls floating in the seaweed. Phalaropes are notoriously tame, and they eventually allowed us to get within a few feet of them. Later on, we watched the sun finally dip beneath the horizon – a few minutes after midnight!

What was going on in November 1963? The Beatles were top of the hit parade, the Macmillan government was still reeling over the Profumo Affair and, in Dallas, President Kennedy was cruelly assassinated. Meanwhile, off the south coast of Iceland, a new island was emerging from the depths of the ocean.

Forty years later, historians continue to argue over the long-term impact of the events of that era. But the island of Surtsey – named after the Norse God of Fire, Surtir – is still there for us to marvel at and for a lucky few to visit. In June, I hitched a helicopter ride from the Icelandic coastguard, and fulfilled one of my lifetime ambitions: to set foot on a piece of land which did not even exist at the time of my birth.

I was afraid that the reality would not live up to my expectations, but I need not have worried. Surtsey is, quite simply, incredible: a lump of volcanic rock and ash, still bearing the scars of its extraordinary origins – the result of the eruption of an undersea volcano. From the air, shades of black and grey are relieved only by a single, dazzling patch of green.

As the sound of the helicopter drifted away towards the horizon, I looked up to see a Swallow hawking for insects over the black rocks. Swallows do not breed in Iceland, and this lone bird must have taken a diversion on its way from Africa to Scandinavia. As the sun shone, I wondered if it might decide to hang around until a mate arrived.

The next signs of life I saw were tiny plants, seemingly dropped directly onto the ashy ‘soil'. Right from the start, Surtsey has been a living laboratory, enabling scientists to observe at first hand how life colonises a new environment. The first life-forms here were midges, closely followed by plants whose seeds had washed up on the shore. Today, parts of the island are quite well vegetated, thanks to a group of visitors I could no longer ignore: the gulls.